Noise in Los Angeles

Modeled estimates for general information only — not measurements, not a guarantee, and not for legal, medical or real-estate decisions.

Across 5,656,882 modeled building-façade points in the City of Los Angeles, the median 24-hour level is 56.3 dB CNEL; one point in ten is below 45.6 dB and one in ten above 68.6 dB. At night (10 pm–7 am) the median is 47.5 dB.

The City of Los Angeles is an incorporated city in Los Angeles County. Its figures use its city boundary from the U.S. Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line 2026 files.

See Los Angeles on the map

Figures from the map data release of 14 October 2026, 14:09 UTC. The live map may show a different release.

Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County reference

Modeled levels at building-façade points: Los Angeles alongside the Los Angeles County reference. The 24-hour CNEL includes aircraft; the Night level does not.
24-hour level (CNEL)
	Los Angeles	LA County (reference)
Median	56.3 dB	56.1 dB
1 point in 10 is below	45.6 dB	45.8 dB
1 point in 10 is above	68.6 dB	68.0 dB
Points at or above 55 dB	55.1%	54.8%
Points at or above 60 dB	35.6%	34.1%
Points at or above 65 dB	18.6%	17.3%
Night (10 pm–7 am, LAeq)
Median	47.5 dB	47.5 dB
1 point in 10 is below	37.2 dB	37.5 dB
1 point in 10 is above	60.4 dB	59.8 dB
Points at or above 45 dB	61.1%	62.0%
Points at or above 50 dB	40.2%	39.6%
Points at or above 55 dB	23.2%	22.1%

What the model shows as the main source

At 94.7% of the building-façade points in the City of Los Angeles, road traffic is the largest modeled contribution to the 24-hour level; rail is the largest at 1.5% and aircraft at 3.8%.

The rail figures come from the rail layer. Only the San Fernando Valley main lines are modeled (Metrolink’s Ventura County and Antelope Valley lines, Amtrak and Union Pacific freight, with horns at public crossings); light rail, Metro Rail, other Metrolink lines and rail yards are not. Here, the modeled train level alone is 40 dB CNEL or more at 8.5% of the points.

The aircraft figures come from the airport-contour estimate: levels estimated from official airport noise contours, extended down to 55 dB CNEL. Here, 7.0% of the points lie inside that estimated 55 dB line. Aircraft counts in the 24-hour level only, never in the Night level.

Helicopters are not mapped. Sirens are an optional map layer (an estimate of LAFD fire and ambulance responses, City of LA only), off by default and not in these figures.

More on each source: freeway and road noise, train and rail noise and LAX and aircraft noise.

Buildings

The model has walls for 1,071,559 buildings in the City of Los Angeles. For 48.6% of them the loudest wall is at or above 60 dB CNEL, and for 27.1% at or above 65 dB CNEL. For at least 24.5%, the less-exposed side is 10 dB or more below the loudest wall.

Which side of a building a bedroom or window faces changes the modeled level there: on the decibel scale, a difference of about 10 dB is heard as twice or half as loud. On the map, selecting a building shows its loudest and its least-exposed wall.

Neighborhood Council areas

Each of the City of Los Angeles’ 99 certified Neighborhood Council areas has its own page, listed alphabetically. Their boundaries cover only part of the city and overlap in places, so their figures cannot be added up.

About these figures

The points are building façades of all types, 4 m up and 2 m out from the walls of every kind of building, not only homes. Long walls and large buildings have more points, so the figures describe buildings, not people or households.

The model is uncalibrated. At a single spot it is typically about 6 dB off, higher or lower, and compared with measurements it reads about 3.6 to 4.4 dB high on average at measured sites where freeway noise dominates, with a wide spread. An area figure says nothing certain about any one building; look up an address on the map for its own modeled levels.

Partly modeled areas are described by their modeled part only. The figures come from building façades only, so open land does not affect them. On the map, land with no freeway or major road within 3 km has no computed value and shows the lowest color; that is an assumption, not a measurement.

Figures are road, rail and aircraft at building façades; the map’s background “city hum” layer is not included in these figures.

Not in the figures: helicopters (not mapped), sirens (an optional map layer, off by default), construction, events, nightlife, neighbors and sound indoors.

Place and county boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau, TIGER/Line Shapefiles 2026. Census boundaries are drawn for statistics and are not legal land descriptions.

Neighborhood Council boundaries: City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering (LA GeoHub, Neighborhood Councils (Certified)), CC BY 4.0.